


Making Ghosts

by heckmedic



Series: AND THEN ALL THE ANGELS FELL [1]
Category: Overwatch (Video Game)
Genre: Dissociation, talon au
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-07-09
Updated: 2016-07-09
Packaged: 2018-07-22 12:44:02
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,434
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7439857
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/heckmedic/pseuds/heckmedic
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Whatever remains of the Jesse she knew cries out silently, unheard, in the endless void within his chest. That Jesse beats against the walls of his cell, vaguely heart-shaped, as the real Jesse sighs and sits back on his heels. </p>
<p>“That’s a real shame, Lena. A real, cryin’ shame. Ya could’ve been useful.”</p>
            </blockquote>





	Making Ghosts

As fast as Tracer was, she hadn’t been _quite_ fast enough. Jesse watched from the doorway as she struggled in the grip of the full-arm cuffs they’d put on her-one step away from a _straitjacket_. He watched as her accelerator flickered and pulsed as she looked again and again for some way to rewind, start over, **try again.**

Something had been found in the files extracted from the Gibraltar databases that had allowed them to take her time-jumping away from her. For now, Lena Oxton was going nowhere except the cell they had ready and waiting for her. That didn’t stop her from flickering and wavering in and out of place like a weak gas-blue flame; one moment limp, the next, vicious. At a particularly hard struggle, one of the agents escorting her smacked her sharply across the face, halting her struggles for a moment. Jesse took that moment to step in.

**“** Alright, boys, I‘ll take it from here. **** **”**

He stared the Talon agents down as they glared at him. Their black armour gave them the look of lean canines; creatures kept trim and ready to attack at any time. Jesse drew himself up a little taller and bristled right back, hyena-like. The air did not drop as he firmly seized the cuffs, but once or twice, it did waver. He made no efforts to look at her, acknowledge their once-friendship at all. When he made her sit on the spartan bench in the centre of the glass-fronted cell, he saw the ghost of that friendship in her eyes.

**“** Why? **”** was all she said.

He kept his cool and unshakeable look on her as he drew a deep breath of cigar smoke and blew it in a plume towards the ceiling; watched it swirl away into some hidden ventillation fan. The air hummed from the bright white lights overhead.

**“** Just doin’ as I’m told. **”** was his dry reply.

After that, he waved for one of the guards beside the cell; a nod was exchanged. She watched the guard leave with confusion, worry. Jesse said nothing as he left the cell and headed for the showers. 

He _still_ didn’t say anything when the first high, piercing cry echoed down the hallway, wavering in the steamy air between himself and the others in the room. A shrug. Another wail, choked off by a sob. Looks like they’d gotten started. He turned to the man beside him, who looked scared of what was going to be said to him. Jesse brushed water away from his face, leaned back.

**“** Pass the shower gel. **”**

* * *

All in all, she lasted an admirable 18 hours. Reyes wanted to tell the interrogator to press her further, go in search of information and truths at the **roots** of her teeth, beneath her fingernails, behind her _eye sockets_. Jesse quietly disagreed, when the meeting room had emptied. The halls, for now, were silent again…At least until the agent wearing the black scrubs finished his meal in the mess hall and picked up different utensils afterward.

**“** She ain’t like the others, Reyes. You can’t just push ‘till she gives. **”**

The reply was a low growl of frustration; a pen flicked venomously over the glass table. He watched it roll off the edge.Waited a beat.

**“** I know…Girl always was made of **glass**. **”**

Another pause. Jesse’s eyes flickered up to Reyes’; heavy with guarded ideas.

**“** There’s one thing we can try. **”**

* * *

She was in a terrible state when Jesse and Reyes entered the cell. Her hair hung limply around her face, her clothes, what hadn’t been torn yet, were dishevelled, stained. Dark bruises ringed her eyes, neck, wrists. Her knuckles were bloodied from where she’d clawed at the white-tiled floor. 

Jesse noted the bucket and mop outside, and decided he didn’t want to see what colour the water inside was.

He watched Reyes stand before her; saw her sit up haltingly in her shadow. The fire and life and energy had gone from her eyes now. Where once there had been a proud gazelle, there was now a timid mouse. 

**“** Where are they. **”**

**“** I t-told you, Torbjorn and Reinhardt were the only ones who said where they were going- **”**

Reyes seized a fistful of her lanky hair and wrenched it upwards, bringing her face close to the bone white of his mask.

**“** _You l i e._ **”**

Jesse watched him produce a blade from somewhere in the shadows of his coat; black, serrated, millitary. Watched it press threateningly into the soft white skin of her throat.

**“** You’ve got three seconds to tell me, or I _paint_ the floor red. One. _Two_ - **”**

**“** Wait. **”**

He stands back up from where he’d been leaning nonchalantly against the wall. The knife draws back a fraction as Reyes turns ever-so-slightly towards him.

**“** No need to make a mess, Reyes. Lemme. **”**

At his insistent hurry-up gesture, Reyes deposits the blade in his hand with a flourish and moves aside. Jesse kneels with only a faint noise of discomfort at the creaking of his knees-as though kneeling to tie a shoelace than **kill** a _friend_ -avoiding her eyes as he does so. 

It isn’t until the first black strap of the accelerator harness is severed that she understands what he’s going to do. Then she starts screaming. Weeping, howling, _begging_ incoherently. Tears flood her face, seep into the cracks of her grimace. A slug-trail of snot swings from her nose as she writhes weakly. Her previously faint flickering became positively anbaric, a strobe in the middle of cell as she tried and failed and tried again to blink away.

**“** God, Jesse, please, no, nonononono, not this, anything but this- **”**

He hauls her forwards to get at the straps on her back. Saws through one, then the other. Shoves her back, wrenches her knees apart, hacks at the straps encircling her thighs. Sobbing silently now, the flickering abruptly stops. The accelerator falls with a surprisingly soft clank to the floor. He picks up one half, the straps hanging like cut tendons, offers it to Reyes.

**“** Figured we’d want it intact. Best th’other half around if she decides to squeal though. **”**

**“** I’l get it to R & D later. **”**

The remaining half of the accelerator glows softly beside the drain set into the floor.

The sounds of Reyes’ exit are masked by Lena’s quiet sobbing. He regards her quaking frame with something akin to pity before it’s chased away by boredom, distaste. She hugs herself in her terror, and seems smaller without her lifeline wrapped around her chest. In amongst everything, he notes that the union jack patch stitched into the sleeve of her jacket has been tugged loose and he toys idly with the loose corner of it.

**“** Just tell ‘em what he wants to know, Lena. It doesn’t have to be like this. **”**

If there is a strain of faint hope in his voice, she does not appear to recognise it. She speaks in a hoarse whisper to the tiles as she rocks back and forth.

**“** I’m sorry I’m sorry I’m sorry. **”**

The words are thin and wraith-like, exhaled past teeth threaded with strings of nervous saliva. Jesse glances down at her feet; already they’re starting to become paler, somehow see-through. He watches as it creeps faster and faster up her legs. 

The rosary he keeps on him always begins burning a hole in his back pocket. He is making a **ghost** , and he knows it will haunt him until he is dead and buried. He watches Lena’s soul begin to slip free of her body in real time. Finds himself achingly empty, and hating himself for it. He casts a silent prayer to God as he looks with detached horror at Lena’s ghost coming out. 

Whatever remains of the Jesse she knew cries out silently, unheard, in the endless void within his chest. _That_ Jesse beats against the walls of his cell, vaguely heart-shaped, as the real Jesse sighs and sits back on his heels. 

**“** That’s a real shame, Lena. A real, _cryin’_ shame. Ya could’ve been useful. **”**

He rises to his feet with another noise of ageing discomfort, scooping up the other half of the accelerator as he does so. Lena sinks down to her knees again, curls in on herself on the floor, still crying silently. She flickers once, faintly, and is not entirely _there_ afterwards.

He exits the cell without another word, only pausing to tell the guard he wants to know when the space is available again. He turns back down the hallway, accelerator swinging from one hand, a trained ease in his steps.

**Whistling** as he goes.

 


End file.
